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Snapshot of Denver's displaced reveals families' hard times

By Jeremy P. MeyerThe Denver Post

Posted:
05/06/2012 01:00:00 AM MDT

After sleeping outside near the 16th Street Mall, Richard Moore sells newspapers on the mall to make money for food. In this year's Homeless Point-In-Time Study, 12,605 homeless people were counted overnight Jan. 23. Of those, 964 were counted as being unsheltered. (RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)

The number of unsheltered homeless people in metro Denver more than doubled over the past year, and one-third of them are families with children, according to the 11th annual Homeless Point-In-Time Study.

The study that found 12,605 homeless people in the Denver metro area is a snapshot in time of the homeless problem — conducted this year on Jan. 23.

Advocates say the study is an undercount but provides useful data for determining the scale of the homeless problem and services required. The survey will be officially released Monday.

Overall, 12,605 homeless people were counted on that January night, up slightly from 11,377 in 2011.

Of those, 964 were counted as being unsheltered, 303 of whom were people in families with children who are living in their cars, on the street or camping out.

In 2011, 411 unsheltered homeless people were counted.

The study found one in four homeless people, or 3,239 people, were considered newly homeless. That number is up 24 percent from 2011.

More than 8,000 of the homeless, or 64 percent, were in families with children younger than 18. In 2007, 38 percent were in families.

In 2012, 4,747 people, or 38 percent, of the 12,605 homeless people counted were in single-parent families.

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"That helps to educate people that this is a different face of homelessness than they are thinking," said Linda Barringer, housing supervisor at the Family Tree and co-chair of the Point-In-Time committee for the Metropolitan Denver Homeless Initiative that conducted the study. "There is a wider variety of people experiencing homelessness than (people) believe. It is hard to swallow to think that there are children sleeping outside."

Regionally, Denver had the largest proportion of homeless — 42 percent. That means 58 percent of the homeless population in the metro area is in surrounding counties.

The study asked people where their last permanent address was, finding most stay in the counties where they previously lived before becoming homeless. In Denver, about 63 percent of the respondents say they had lived in the city before becoming homeless.

"It dispels that myth that people go somewhere else and become homeless," Barringer said. "The majority are homeless in the county that they call home."

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